You must be really careful in this regard because most employers believe that any processes you invent or discover at work or because of a need at work is part of the company's intellectual property.

Technical people usually have to sign away their rights to new process and inventions as part of their secrecy agreement with that company. This usually includes the "Ureka" factor which generally accompanies major breakthroughs and inventions.

Please be very careful because you could end up out of a job and in a legal battle that an individual cannot win. (Just by the lack of resources.)

I personally co-hold three patents in the US and Canada and I am not even really sure I got a "thank you" from the company. It didn't matter to me though because I was much more interested in the prestige and being able to add that to my resume.

In consulting of course, anything you invent or develop for the company retaining you automatically becomes part of their intellectual property.

If you start a business on the side, it should be formally known and approved (in writing) by the appropriate executives inside your company and be a business entirely different from your company's business.

I even know of a case where the president of a large company approved (legally and in writing) an engineering manager, on company time and with company resources to develop a new business owned by the engineering manager and others in the company. This however was for a complementary but entirely different product. It was done so that the company could break into an entirely new market with many millions of dollars of sales and that indeed happened. Later on, when the president wanted to buy the engineering manager's business and roll it into the company, the engineering manager refused and left the company. Today that start up company has two plants and two sales offices in the US and Canada and owns at least one subsiduary company. So it can be done!